"This election is about JD Vance."

William Lindsey :toad:

~ James Fallows

Election Countdown, 17 Days to Go: Ground Truths That Matter.

In the chaos of daily news, don't lose sight of: The danger of JD Vance, the naked agitprop of Fox, and the common sense of citizens.

(fallows.substack.com)

William Lindsey :toad:

Noting that "it seems clear that a vote for Trump is really a vote for his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance," Heather Cox Richardson says that people had encouraged her to take a day off from writing.

But after Trump's rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, yesterday, she can't do that:

#Trump #JDVance #age #MentalDecline
/2

October 19, 2024

A number of people telling me we all need a night off had almost convinced me not to write tonight.

(heathercoxrichardson.substack.com)

William Lindsey :toad:

"Trump spoke at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he told a long, meandering story about golfing legend Arnold Palmer that ended with praise for Palmer’s… anatomy.

He went on to call Vice President Kamala Harris—whose name he deliberately mispronounced— 'a sh*t vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here, you’re fired. Get out of here. Get the hell out of here, Kamala.'”

#Trump #JDVance #age #MentalDecline
/3

William Lindsey :toad:

"As Trump’s remarks got weirder and weirder, the Fox News Channel cut away and instead showed Harris being cheered at a packed, exuberant, super-charged rally in Georgia. ...

Last night, his advice to an audience in Detroit to vote took its own wild turn: 'Jill, get your fat husband off the couch,' he said. 'Get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump, he’s going to save our country.'"

#Trump #JDVance #age #MentalDecline
/4

William Lindsey :toad:

"'Get that guy the hell off our— get him up, Jill, slap him around. Get him up. Get him up, Jill. We want him off the couch to get out and vote.'

Trump’s performances over the past few days seem to confirm that the 2024 October surprise is the increasingly obvious mental incapacity of the Republican candidate for president."

#Trump #JDVance #age #MentalDecline #OctoberSurprise
/5

William Lindsey :toad:

The Five 8 respond to the pretense (pretending as in lying — let's face it: a lot of us love lies and tell lies) that we just don't "know" Kamala, so we can't possibly vote for her.

As the video points out, we absolutely DO know Donald Trump. And these folks want him instead?!

#KamalaHarris #Trump #JDVance #age #MentalDecline
/6

Stevielee

@wdlindsy Elon now has a toupee. No way is that his hair. Nearly bald at a very young age

William Lindsey :toad:

@Stevielee I hadn't seen that young photo of him with young Thiel — what an unholy coupling. Yes, you're right, where has he gotten so much hair in his older years?

William Lindsey :toad:

"As an American, and as a historian who writes about forced population movements, I believe that we are not taking the Trump-Vance deportation plan seriously enough.

This failure of imagination could allow extreme repression within our country as well as a fundamental change in its society and politics."

~ Timothy Snyder

#Trump #JDVance #immigrants #deportation
/7

Twelve Million Deportations

And an altered America

(snyder.substack.com)

William Lindsey :toad:

"An attempt to rapidly deport twelve million people will also change everyone else. As Trump has said, such an action will have to bring in law enforcement at all levels. Such a huge mission will effectively redefine the purpose of law enforcement: the principle is no longer to make all people feel safe, but to make some people unsafe."

#Trump #JDVance #immigrants #deportation
/8

William Lindsey :toad:

"Such an enormous deportation will requires an army of informers. People who denounce their neighbors or coworkers will be presented as positive examples. Denunciation then becomes a culture. …

The deep purpose of a mass deportation is to establish a new sort of politics, a politics of us-and-them, which means (at first) everyone else against the Latinos."

#Trump #JDVance #immigrants #deportation
/9

William Lindsey :toad:

"There is a reason the term 'fascist' is in such wide circulation as Mr. Trump amps up a campaign increasingly built around nativism, racial resentment, fear and threats, Ms. [Ruth] Ben-Ghiat said.

'It’s a measure of the urgency and sense of emergency that Hillary Clinton and Mark Milley are using this word,' she said. 'It packs a punch.'”

~ J. Weisman

#Trump #JDVance #fascism #racism #WhiteSupremacy
/10

Gift link from Ruth Ben-Ghiat at her Lucid blog on Substack.

nytimes.com

(www.nytimes.com)

William Lindsey :toad:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Jason Stanley speak with Ali Velshi about how "Trump's campaign rhetoric has become so extreme that analysts and historians are openly comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini. And yet the American public seems to treat him with the same semi-seriousness that has characterized his entire political career."

#Trump #JDVance #fascism #immigrants
/11

'Why aren't people more alarmed?': As Trump becomes more extreme, Americans get used to it

Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric has become so extreme that analysts and historians are openly comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini. And yet the American public seems to treat him with the same semi-seriousness that has characterized his entire political career. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University history professor, and Jason Stanley, Yale University philosophy professor, discuss with Ali Velshi. Watch more Alex Wagner Tonight clips on YouTube at MSNBC.com/Alex

MSNBC.com (www.msnbc.com)

William Lindsey :toad:

Noting that Trump's niece Mary Trump is warning us that Trump's mental decline is steep and dangerous for all of us if he's elected, Dean Obeidallah writes:

"Corporate media covered President Biden’s potential cognitive issues non-stop—but when it comes to Trump they are giving him a pass. We know that’s not happenstance, but rather a decision made by corporate media executives—many of whom who are supporting Trump."

#Trump #age #MentalDecline #media #MediaFail
/12

Mary Trump is warning about Donald’s dementia--yet corporate media still refuses to cover it!

This is by design!

(deanobeidallah.substack.com)

Mastodon Migration VOTED

@wdlindsy

Analysts and historians maybe, but the New York Times, from whom most corporate media take their cues has two young reporters to sanewash everything he does.

If you look at what Michael Bender and Michael Gold have written on Trump it is a remarkable cleansing of his bizarre, profane and erratic behavior. Only when called out and shamed do they in any way report on the reality of Trump's insanity, and then only in euphemisms.

Michael C. Bender - The New York Times

Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections.

(www.nytimes.com)

Michael Gold - The New York Times

Michael Gold is a political correspondent for The Times covering the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and other candidates in the 2024 presidential elections.

(www.nytimes.com)

Thad

@wdlindsy I appreciate the analysis but I think it's remarkably naive to suggest the purpose of law enforcement was ever to make all people feel safe.

I live in a county that elected Joe Arpaio six times. The notion that law enforcement's primary purpose would be to terrorize brown people, with the enthusiastic support of a decisive portion of the electorate, isn't new to me. But seeing it on a national scale is.

William Lindsey :toad:

@Thad What about Snyder's comment indicates that he imagines law enforcement was every about making all of us feel safe? I don't read him to be saying that at all. I read him to be saying that we maintain — against much evidence, I think he'd say as an informed historian — that law enforcement exists to make all of us safe. And choosing conditions that target some of us while privileging others of us makes us all unsafe — as we've seen time and again in our history.

William Lindsey :toad:

@mastodonmigration You're exactly right about that.

Choose Sanity

@wdlindsy Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s an exponential curve … the normalization began with Reagan and the change was slow for a long time. In 2016 it started a hockey stick increase. Now … ugh.

Choose Sanity

@wdlindsy *2016*: "In other words, just like the overuse of historical analogies should not make us too quick to embrace them, a search for a perfect ideological replica of interwar Fascism should not blind us to its ugly re-emergence in 2016."

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(www.salon.com)